Shantytown’s Covid survival fight
Volunteers built Shantytown on a wing and a prayer. Fifty years later, it’s still going strong. Joanne Naish reports.
Shantytown is so close to Grey mayor Tania Gibson’s heart she even got married there. She takes her children on the same steam train she fondly remembers from her own childhood visits. She married her husband, Stephen, in the pretty little white church that dates back to 1866 and originally stood in the gold mining town of No Town, before it was moved to Ngahere and then donated to Shantytown.
Shantytown has held a special place in the hearts of West Coasters for generations, keeping the gold mining history of the region alive. As it celebrates its
50th anniversary, many hope it can keep going, despite the tourism downturn sparked by the
Covid-19 pandemic.
Gibson says Shantytown Heritage Park has survived tough times in the past 50 years of boom and bust economies on the West Coast.
‘‘I got married there, so it’s a pretty special place for me. As a kid, visiting every year and going on the train was always great. They didn’t have the school visits when I was a kid but my kids love going there with their school and going to the old classroom and learning what it was like in the old days.’’
The idea of Shantytown arose out of a meeting in Greymouth in
1968, when a group of railway and vintage car enthusiasts discussed the possibility of forming a society for the car and preservation of such relics, and the creation of a tourist attraction.
Greymouth train driver Ian Tibbles said he was a young impressionable 18-year-old when he got involved in the idea.
‘‘I was on the steam trains on the railway with an interest in sawmilling, history, gold mining all that sort of stuff. A group of people were interested in preserving bush tramway locomotives that haul the logs to the sawmills. They joined forces with a guy who wanted to start a car museum in Greymouth, the idea was formed and at the same time Barney Sutherland was running a gold panning operation out at Rutherglen so the two joined forces and Shantytown was born,’’ he said.
The late A L Sutherland MBE, known to everyone as ‘‘Barney’’, was a watchmaker and jeweller, and was involved in the Marsden Sluicing and Gold Company, a working gold claim, situated amid the splendour of native bush at Rutherglen near the present site of Shantytown. He ran gold panning for tourists on the site.
He presented his idea of recreating an old West Coast town of the 19th century to the rail and car enthusiasts, and they formed the West Coast Historical and Mechanical Society.
Tibbles is one of two surviving life members of the society.
He said Shantytown came about after the opening of the Haast road.
‘‘People started to flow through the West Coast like magic and him and his fellow businessmen thought that if you could keep the visitors in Greymouth overnight, give them something to do, they’d eat, they’d drink. Barney went overseas to America and while he was there he found a place called Knott’s Berry farm, Barney brought that idea back to Greymouth,’’ he said.
‘‘It was a brilliant idea, it was exciting. I lived out there and it was like magic being built on your doorstep.’’
He helped in the amazing total of 10,367 work hours, over a period of 18 months, which were donated, along with goods and building supplies.
‘‘The Dobson mine had recently closed and there was a thousand men out of work. A lot of the early building materials came from the Dobson mine, beams in the roofs, Stillwater sawmill donated packs of timber and the town was built.’’
Shantytown officially opened on January 23, 1971 and it had 5000 visitors in the first month.
New hotels and motels sprang up in Greymouth, and the bus tours rolled in, he said.
In 1977, Shantytown had 147,000 visitors.
Tibbles went on to be employed at Shantytown as train driver, a job he held for 43 years.
‘‘The most we did in a day was 18 every half hour. It started at 9.15 in the morning and did the last trip at 4.15 and it would run two carriages full every half hour. In the last 15 years, business has dropped off a bit compared to what it was in those crazy days. Shantytown was the go-to place. It was amazing,’’ he said.
Marketing manager Laugherne Kemp said Covid took the wind out of Shantytown’s sails.
‘‘The global Covid situation has had an impact on Shantytown through the loss of our international visitors, which made up around 50 per cent of our annual visitation,’’ he said.
Government funding had helped through the challenging times, ‘‘albeit as a slightly smaller business’’, he said.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said Shantytown was awarded $500,000 through the Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme to retain staff, repairs and maintenance and marketing.
‘‘It is an iconic tourism attraction and is a drawcard for visitors to the West Coast. It also scored above the minimum required for funding,’’ she said.
Kemp said it had managed to keep 19 staff on and attract domestic tourists, particularly during school holidays.
‘‘School holidays have been great for us, even better than previous years. But the gaps in between have been quiet. After Christmas, we had the best day since 2011 with 510 people through the doors,’’ he said.
‘‘The last couple of years have definitely been trying for West Coast tourism ventures and Shantytown has felt many of the impacts. Road closures, flooding, slips, rail closures, bridge washouts, Covid-19; everything has been chipping away at the park’s bottom line. However, getting to the 50th birthday has been one thing that helps keep the team focused. We are definitely keen to throw the glad rags on and celebrate,’’ he said.
The park would be recreating its opening day on Saturday with special entry rates of $5, live music, best-dressed and best beard competitions and birthday cake.
Attractions include displays of historical items at the jeweller’s store, foundry, hospital and newspaper office. People can take a train ride through the bush to an old sawmill and try some gold panning themselves.
During the school term, its Marsden Valley Education Centre, which is partly funded by the Ministry of Education, takes school groups, covering how children were educated in Victorian and Edwardian times.
With the downturn in tourism, the business has focused more on itself as an events venue with the help of its standalone entity, the West Coast Events Centre, where it can hold meetings and celebrations in the region’s largest venue, with capacity for 350 people.
‘‘It has boiled down to our team being more proactive in the promotion and ongoing development of the brand, in order to gain greater awareness outside of the West Coast region. Fortunately, Development West Coast also see the economic potential and has enabled us to improve our outreach and look at strategies to find clients who will be a perfect fit for holding business events on the West Coast.’’
He said attracting meetings and conferences had its challenges because of the distance to travel to the West Coast, along with limited accommodation capacities for large groups.
‘‘Access to financial assistance can help keep the wheels on right now but it is naı¨ve to think of those funds as the silver bullets. Especially considering the unknown global situation over the short, medium and long term.
‘‘As has always been the case since Shantytown’s inception, hard work, perseverance and thinking outside the box are what will really keep us chugging along in the grand scheme. Even simple things, like turning off a light switch, helps keep our operational costs down that dollar or two more in an effort to survive for another 50 years.’’
Development West Coast chief executive Heath Milne said Shantytown was an iconic visitor attraction.
‘‘Shantytown generates wider economic benefits for the region, but its importance to the Coast goes beyond this. The Heritage Park is also recognised by the Ministry of Education as the sole ‘Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom’ provider in the region; it hosts a number of local not-forprofit clubs and organisations on its site, and it is also a Civil Defence Welfare Centre,’’ he said.
For Iona Littlejohn, who has been driving trains at Shantytown for the last 16 years, it is all about the steam engines.
She is one of three drivers who do all the repairs and maintenance on the engines that are run up to five times a day for a trip about a kilometre up through the bush. They use on an old mill line that was used to take the logs out, built in the 1920s. They take passengers up the line and allow them through the engines to give them an appreciation of the machines.
‘‘The steam engines. That’s my favourite part. They’ve been a big part right from the start. Now there is a team of us that is in charge of keeping them going, hopefully for another 50 years,’’ she said.
She said Shantytown had been a big part of the West Coast identity for 50 years.
‘‘We all came as kids... I think it’s important that we get to look at history in a hands-on way. It’s important to keep the West Coast history going and make it fun and enjoyable to learn about it.’’